


A Host of Individual Sins

by patchfire, raving_liberal



Series: Story of Three Boys/Rambling Wrecks AUs [10]
Category: Glee, Rambling Wrecks
Genre: Assault, College Football, Depression, Drug Addiction, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, M/M, Risk-Taking Behavior, Suicide, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 06:18:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patchfire/pseuds/patchfire, https://archiveofourown.org/users/raving_liberal/pseuds/raving_liberal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Casey doesn’t call Dave on the <i>Monday</i>versary, and instead stays romantically involved with Miles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Host of Individual Sins

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** Major (original) character death, suicide, illegal drug abuse, unsafe sex and other risk-taking behaviors, homophobic violence, eating disorders, depression/despair. **Don’t read this one, david_of_oz!**
> 
> **Editing/Betaing:** Edited in-house this time, because reasons. 
> 
> **Authors’ Notes:** The following story is an AU and not part of the SOTB/RW canon. **Please observe all warnings when deciding to read.** Extended warnings for Horrible Things week can be found [here](http://storyof3boys.livejournal.com/125422.html).
> 
>  
> 
> Not a new work. We're migrating the AUs away from the SOTB series and into their own, so we can get the odd tags and pairings off the SOTB series tags!

David’s letter—or more precisely, the letter Casey starts writing to David—reaches seven-and-a-half pages before it dawns on Casey what, exactly, that might mean. The point of the letter is to apologize for the things he’s done to wrong David, or to hurt him, or to manipulate him. The lies he’s told. The secrets he's kept so poorly. The fear he’s subjected David to. Sleep lost, school days missed, social outings cut short. The letter reads like nothing more than a testament to the many reasons why David’s life is better, infinitely better, without Casey in it, and in the end, Casey can’t even finish writing it. 

February twentieth comes and goes, and Casey doesn’t remind anyone of why that date might be significant, he doesn’t send the letter, and he certainly doesn’t call David. He keeps hanging out with Miles, and fucking Miles, and fucking other guys at the center, and he does his best not to think about David. His best isn’t good enough, not really, but if there’s one thing Casey can do better than any other thing, it’s lie, so he lies to himself and everyone else and pretends not to think about David.

By the middle of March, Miles asks him, “So, Cherry... do you want to just make this a _thing_ with us?” and since that sounds like as good an idea as any, Casey finds himself with Miles Brown as a boyfriend. It’s not as weird as he might have expected, because it doesn’t actually change much. He already spends most of his time with Miles, the sex is already a regular thing, he sleeps over at Miles’ place as often as not, so all the boyfriend thing does is give it all a certain feeling of permanence, which in turn, gives Casey a sense of security that he hasn’t really had since David went to Atlanta.

Not that Casey thinks about David, not if he can help it, or if he does, he makes sure to fuck those thoughts out of his head as fast and hard as possible. Hard enough and fast enough, and the little buzz in the back of his brain will help him for forget, help him push those thoughts away and tamp them down tightly. Nobody’s better for that than Miles; Miles is so very easy to get lost in, that he’s almost like a drug himself. 

One day in early April, soon enough after fucking that Casey's brain still has that pleasant buzz but long enough after that the sweat has cooled on their bodies, Miles rolls over onto his side and stares at Casey for a long while. He brushes a strand of hair out of Casey’s face, tucks it behind Casey’s ear, and takes a quick breath, like he’s steeling himself for something.

“So, Cherry...” Miles begins, brushing that same strand of hair behind Casey’s ear again, then running his thumb around the edge of Casey’s ear. “So, I’ve been thinking about this thing with you and me."

Casey nods his head, but doesn't say anything, because it seems like one of those rare occasions when Miles can't quite figure out what to say.

"And the more I thought about it, the more I realized something," Miles says. His finger traces around Casey's ear and down his neck almost absently. 

Casey half-closes his eyes and leans into the touch, making a little "mmhmm?" sound to let Miles know he should keep talking.

"Well, and what I realized was—and don't laugh at me, Cherry, I swear I can't handle you laughing at me."

"I wouldn't," Casey says. He rests his hand on Miles' arm. "Miles. I promise."

"So... So what I realized was that I love you," Miles says finally. "I love you, Cherry."

Casey's hand tightens on Miles' arm, and he says, without thinking about what he's saying, "I love you, too."

It's not even a lie. He does love Miles. It's not the same thing he felt for David—might still feel if he ever let himself slow down enough to feel it—but maybe something like that doesn't come around a second time. That kind of love, that wasn't something Casey deserves from anyone, especially David. But Miles is sweet, and he's funny, and he's gorgeous, and he loves Casey. It's probably more than most people get, even the best people.

"Yeah?" Miles asks, his whole face lighting up. "Really?"

"Really," Casey says. This is so much better than Casey could have hoped for when he started his sophomore year, before PFLAG and David and Monday. If it’s not what he had hoped for after those things, what does that matter? Things will be so good, because Miles loves him, and being loved like that, that's lucky. Most people don't get it.

The “I love you” changes things more than the being boyfriends did. Suddenly it’s not straight to the center on Saturdays after Casey finishes work, or if it is, nobody disappears for hours with a new friend. It’s not something they discuss, but it happens all the same. Casey sees Miles making eye contact with a few guys; he also sees Miles break the eye contact first. Casey has never had a problem with Miles and his new friends—at least not the boys, and even the girls he can let pass as long as he doesn’t think about it too hard, and he’s so very good at not thinking about things too hard—but there’s something about Miles giving that up for _him_ that makes Casey feel that same little buzz in his brain. It’s almost better than the fucking, Miles making that kind of sacrifice for him, and things are good, they really are.

Then Miles goes to Clemson, and it gets harder, because Miles hundreds of miles away isn’t the same as Miles _there_. A phone call, a Skype chat, those don’t substitute for Casey being able to close his eyes and disappear in the movements of Miles’ body under his. Casey can’t get lost in a voice coming through a phone, and all the things he’s pushed to the back of his head, the memories he’s muffled and drowned, start to reassert themselves. Casey and Miles make it through that first month, and then Casey starts going back to the center again, because it’s that or the lighter, and he’s trying so hard not to slide back into _that_. Not yet, anyway. Not yet.

He doesn’t try to keep it a secret from Miles. Why would he? They never placed any sort of boundaries on each other. They never set any rules for how things worked between them. Casey tells him when they’re Skyping, “I went to the center,” and that’s all he has to say. Miles knows what it means, and if he looks sad for half a second, the look passes quickly into his easy smile. 

“Good for you, Cherry, keeping busy without me,” Miles says, and that’s all there is to say about it. Casey’s as safe as ever, he and Miles still get tested every three months, and when Miles is home for a weekend, anything that happens in those in-between times don’t matter. It’s just Casey and Miles, and the whole rest of the world vanishes into their near-frantic fucking. Nothing else matters because nothing else _can_ matter; if they think about the things they’re missing, of Miles lying and hiding his way through Clemson, of Casey pretending a boy named David never existed, the reality of their circumstances would crush them. 

Casey doesn’t apply to Georgia Tech. He applies to Auburn, Virginia Tech, Missouri, and two different schools in Ohio. Shannon and Monty are thrilled that he’s exploring so many options, but really it’s because the more schools that Casey applies to that aren’t Georgia Tech, the less he has to think about the fact he’s not applying to Georgia Tech. Miles is thrilled about Virginia Tech, because it would put Casey only half the driving distance to Clemson that Lima is, and even though Casey pretends that has nothing to do with why he ends up deciding on Virginia Tech, it does. 

Once that decision is made, it’s all over but the waiting, as far as Casey’s concerned. For all that Shannon keeps encouraging him to make the most of his senior year, there’s really nothing left in Lima that matters that much to him anymore. Once Casey leaves, he won’t be coming back. Not for holidays, not for summers, not at all. He’ll already carry the scars from Lima for the rest of his life; he’s not voluntarily reopening the wounds over and over again.

The school year ends, Miles comes home for the better part of the summer, and Casey keeps working and swimming throughout June and July. If he looks up hopefully every time the door to the Starbucks opens, or if he scans the faces inside Pat’s or the Kewpee a little too long, Miles doesn’t notice, and it doesn’t come to anything, anyway. Casey doesn’t see the face he tells himself he’s not looking for, and just a few weeks after Miles heads back to Clemson in July, Casey, Shannon, and Monty drive Casey’s things out to Virginia Tech.

Casey adjusts to life at Virginia Tech faster than he would have expected, both academically and socially; he’s out, his roommate knows he has a boyfriend, and nobody particularly cares about who Casey is, what he does, or who he’s involved with. College affords Casey a degree of anonymity that Lima never could, and with it a bubble of safety. Miles drives up to VT once, and he and Casey meet halfway another few times. The third week of the football season, Clemson plays at VT, and after the game Miles tells his teammates he knows some people there who’ll give him a ride back to Clemson on Sunday. Casey’s roommate finds somewhere else to stay that night. 

Everything goes so smoothly—nobody seems to question who Miles spent the night with or who drove him back—and they decide the risk might be worth it, so Casey drives down for the next Clemson game. After the game, Casey and Miles go into town to what passes for a club in Clemson, South Carolina. It’s not much, but it’s something, and they rent a cheap hotel room for the night. They do this for the next three home games, too. 

Casey is never sure who saw them or what they saw. Miles doesn’t call Casey himself; Alicia calls him late on a Monday evening to tell him that Miles is in the hospital. Casey almost never talks to Alicia on the phone, so his heart does a nervous flip when he sees her number.

“Casey, you ought to get down to Clemson,” Alicia tells him after he answers. “Some guys jumped Miles and beat him up really bad.”

Casey somehow manages to navigate through the remaining two or three exchanges of the brief phone call, but he doesn’t remember what else Alicia says or what he says to her in response. He throws a few things into his backpack and sprints to the Lemon, and it isn’t until he’s a good two hours into his drive to Clemson that his phone rings again.

“Miles!” Casey says, pressing the phone to his ear and steadying the wheel with one hand. “Alicia called me! I’m on my way!”

“Wish you weren’t, Cherry,” Miles says. His voice sounds garbled and tight, and Casey has to blink his eyes hard to stop them from tearing up. “It’s no good here.”

“No, Miles, you’re hurt. I need to be there.”

“Not gonna help me,” Miles says. “Just gonna make it worse.”

“But _Miles_ ,” Casey says. “What _happened_?”

“Guess somebody saw us,” Miles answers. “Guess they saw us, Cherry. Guess they didn’t like what they saw.”

“Who?” Casey asks him. Miles sighs and then gets quiet enough that Casey can hear the hospital noises in the background.

“Didn’t see who,” Miles finally answers. Casey can tell from his voice that he’s lying, but he doesn’t press, not this time. 

Casey pulls the Lemon over to the side of the road, yanking hard on the steering wheel, and he turns the engine off. “Miles. Are you going to be alright?”

“Doc says I’m out for the rest of the season, probably,” Miles says. He doesn’t sound like Miles, not really. He sounds like someone doing a bad Miles impression based on Miles’ voicemail message, like a tinny recording of Miles. 

“Miles,” Casey whispers into the phone. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, shit happens, Cherry. Nothing anybody can do about it.” 

Casey doesn’t turn right around and drive back to VT. He sits by the side of the road for an hour, trying to decide what to do. After that, he drives to a McDonald’s and sits there for another few hours drinking coffee. Eventually, the workers tell him he has to buy something else or leave, so he goes back out to the Lemon. Miles didn’t sound like himself, and he wasn’t telling Casey the whole truth, so maybe that means Casey should still drive down to Clemson. It sounds like a better option than driving back to VT alone and waiting for news, so that’s what Casey does.

The sun is rising as Casey parks at the hospital. Walking into the building, he’s struck with a strange feeling of what he’d almost call déjà vu; it’s not like he’s done this before, so much a this is what he imagines it felt like for other people, with him on the other side of it, the one in the hospital being visited instead of the visitor. The feeling is so strong that he has to duck into a bathroom and splash water on his face before he continues looking for the room number Alicia had texted to him in the middle of the night. 

Casey quietly opens the door to Miles’ room and stands in the doorway looking at Miles lying on the narrow hospital bed. His face looks terrible, as bad as Casey’s looked on _Monday_ , bruised and swollen. Miles glances up at the doorway.

“Told you not to come, Cherry,” Miles says.

Casey shrugs. “I know. I ignored you.”

Miles moves over on the bed and Casey sits down next to him. “Everything’s messed up,” Miles says softly. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Yeah,” Casey says. What else is there to say?

“Never should’ve come to Clemson,” Miles says. 

“No,” Casey agrees. 

They don’t really talk after that. Miles’ Ma and Mr. Brown come in, and Miles’ Ma fusses over Miles and talks to a doctor, and Mr. Brown stands by the wall and frowns. A few people from Clemson come to talk to Miles, and they give Casey a hard look when they see him. Miles won’t talk to them, either way. He won’t talk to the doctor and he won’t talk to his Ma or Mr. Brown. A police officer comes in and asks Miles questions, and Miles does talk to her; he tells her that he doesn’t know who jumped him—which Casey is sure is a lie—but that it was four, five, maybe even six guys. That much, Casey believes. 

Miles stays in the hospital for another day, and when he’s released, Casey puts him in the Lemon and drives him to VT with him. Miles doesn’t argue. Casey’s roommate doesn’t argue, either, once he gets a good look at Miles, and it’s not like Casey and Miles do anything but lie down on the bed together and sleep. Casey thinks he hears Miles crying in the night that night, but when he says Miles’ name, there’s no answer. 

Miles won’t go back to Clemson. His Ma says maybe next semester it’ll be better, but Casey knows it won’t. Miles isn’t going back to Clemson next semester, next year, or any time. He’s not going back to Lima, either. After he spends a week in Casey’s dormroom, mostly sleeping, he goes into town and gets a job. Miles’ Ma and Mr. Brown send some money for him to put a deposit down on an apartment, and Casey moves in with him over the winter break.

After a couple of weeks, Miles’ face has healed, leaving behind a scar on one eyebrow and what feels to Casey like a perpetual gloom. Miles doesn’t joke like he used to and when they fuck, there’s a desperate quality to it that leaves Casey uneasy. They drive out to Roanoke or Greensboro to go to clubs on the weekend, even if it means they both stumble into the work the next day on little or no sleep. Sometimes Miles begs off on the outings; Casey goes anyway. Miles doesn’t complain, but then, Miles doesn’t really have much to say about anything anymore.

Miles’ job isn’t enough to pay all the bills, so Casey starts working at one of Blacksburg’s two Starbucks on top of the swim lessons and lifeguarding he’s been doing at the local aquatic center. Between classes, swim team, and both jobs, Casey stays busy. Sometimes he forgets to eat. Sometimes it’s more than just sometimes. 

Miles tells him he’s looking skinny, and Casey just snaps, “Shut up, Miles.” Miles shuts up.

Casey’s grades at the end of his first year aren’t as high as he hopes, but with everything that’s happened, maybe that isn’t too surprising. He resolves to do better his second year. He and Miles seem to be doing really great over the summer, even if money’s a little tight, and Casey knows he should be happy. He’s not, though. Miles isn’t the same anymore, and being with him isn’t the same. Casey doesn’t get the little buzz in his brain anymore, there’s nothing that gives him that escape he needs, and the next time he goes to Greensboro without Miles, Casey picks a guy up and fucks him in the bathroom. 

That’s what he does the next time, and the next, and even when he goes with Miles. It’s not that different from before, with the center, Casey tells himself. He tells Miles that, too, and Miles doesn’t argue. Casey fucks his way through his second year at VT in what free time he has available, and he can forget about everything that’s gone wrong, at least for a little while. He’s always careful. His grades that year aren’t any higher, Miles still doesn’t joke, and everything feels off-kilter. 

As Casey starts his junior year at Virginia Tech, he and Miles are fighting all the time. Little things, stupid things, any of it is enough to spark a fight. Sometimes Casey thinks about just breaking up with Miles, but then he thinks about how Miles looked in that hospital room in Clemson, how that’s all Casey’s fault, and he just can’t bring himself to do it. Plus, Miles loves him, and that’s not something Casey can throw away. 

A little before winter break, Casey and Miles have a fight and Casey storms out, hopping into the Lemon and driving to Greensboro. Casey picks up a guy at a club in whose apartment is only a few blocks away. They fuck at the club, then they go back to the guy’s apartment, where the guy pulls out a little glass pipe and a tiny baggie filled with whitish crystals. When he offers the pipe to Casey, Casey only hesitates for a moment before thinking _why not?_

Casey doesn’t ever learn the guy’s name, other than he thinks it starts with a D, though that could just be his memory playing tricks on him. When he finally checks his phone, he has two dozen increasingly frantic messages from Miles and realizes he’s lost over two days worth of time. He’s also lost his job at the aquatic center, because he missed two full days of lessons without calling in. He’s in trouble with the VT swimming coach, too, for missing practice. He doesn’t give a shit about any of it; he’s got his own little baggie and tiny glass pipe in his pocket, and his two days out of the world give him a new perspective on things. Miles is so relieved that Casey comes back that they don’t even fight.

Casey doesn’t go to any of his finals that semester, and he fails most of his classes. He fails most of the classes the following semester. He manages, barely, to keep the job at Starbucks. When he drives into Greensboro now, it’s almost never with Miles, and when he picks up guys at the club, sometimes they tweak, sometimes they fuck, and Casey’s _usually_ careful, but not always. He drops more weight, he sometimes spends hours on end rearranging the bookshelves, and he and Miles fight a lot. This goes on for almost two years.

Then Casey gets sick. It starts with a cold that won’t go away, and even though it’s something they should be looking for, what with Casey’s lifestyle and all, it takes them a few months to figure out what it is. Of course, there’s treatment for it now, but the clinics won’t treat people who are still using, and Casey won’t stop using. _Can’t_ stop using, as point of fact, but since he doesn’t want to, that he can’t is a non-issue. 

Miles gets mad and yells, and Casey yells back, and Miles throws a glass against the wall. It shatters, sending shards and waterspray across the floor, but Casey just says, “Leave if you want to leave, but it’s my body and I’ll do whatever I want with it,” and goes back into the bedroom to tweak.

Miles threatens to leave. He screams, and packs a bag and puts it by the front door, and says he’s leaving. He shouts horrible things at Casey, who ignores him and spends the next few hours arranging and rearranging their bookshelf. Finally, Miles unpacks his bag again and lies down with Casey on the bed. Miles cries, and Casey fucks him, and then Casey gets up and rearranges the bookshelves again. 

Somewhere along the way, Miles starts drinking. He’s a sad drinker, not a violent one, though sometimes Casey picks fights with him just to see what will happen. Nothing happens. He doesn’t scream, he doesn’t tell Casey he’s too skinny. There’s almost nothing left in this Miles of the Miles Brown that Casey knew in high school, except for a desperate, almost pitiful, love that doesn’t make either of them happy anymore. Casey hasn’t felt happy in so long that he’s no longer even sure what it feels like.

There’s a part of Casey that always suspected it would end like this. Life, in his experience, starts off bad and only gets worse through a combination of bad choices and some malevolently-motivated universal force over which no one has any control. Love, hope, even something as simple as escape, all fall apart in overriding entropy. Casey could try and trace it back to a point, even several points, where things went wrong, but once he got to those, he’d just have to keep tracing it even further back to the fact that he is essentially broken and that it was always, in the end, going to come to this. 

Scoring the right kind of pills turns out to be a little harder and more expensive than scoring meth, but Casey manages. He parks the Lemon, whose engine knocks and rattles from years of poor maintenance, in an empty parking lot on the opposite side of town from his apartment with Miles. He takes the pills there, because no matter how bad things ended up, he won’t make Miles be the one who finds him. Casey’s greatest regret is that he dragged Miles down with him; his one lingering spark of gratitude is that at least he didn’t do the same to David. 

Casey thinks about everybody he knew in Lima: the ones who made it out, the ones who didn’t. He’s always thought of himself as someone who had escaped, but he knows now it isn’t true. He didn’t really get away from Lima. He just stalled it for a while. In the end, it found him.


End file.
